‘Friction in public space’ is the 7th tickle research booklet that examines the enrichment of public space experience through overlapping functions and activities. The new booklet is an exciting addition to TCL’s growing research collection.

The research emerged from a dynamic in house studio, conducted with RMIT University, that occurred over a four month period. This studio led by Jen Lynch, posed the question; ‘How do we define public space via the idea of ‘friction’? How do we represent public space that reconciles issues between its flux and form? ‘

The catalogue is structured around key essays, student work, project images and multiple conversations, each addressing the chosen site, Melbourne’s Queen Vic Market’s complex. Tickle is currently working on the next booklet to expand this collection, exploring the forest designs at the Canberra National Arboretum.

Please feel free to contact the office to request a copy of the Tickle Booklets.

Poetic conversation filled the studio. “What I describe in my poems happening in a garden happened to me with the firm this legacy year, “recomposed, resuscitated, imagined again”-

The launch of the TCL Kevin Taylor Legacy in Adelaide was an exhibition of creativity, food and laughter. Mark Tredinnick reflected on the last year of the legacy and we welcomed Simone Slattery a violinist – as our 2017 creative in Residence.

Mark Tredinnick—Reflections on my Year as the Kevin Taylor Legacy Creative in Residence at TCL, 2016

A nature writer, and a chauvinist, like Thoreau, for landscapes that shape us rather more than places we shape, I had written too often in the past years against the garden.

But one lives and sometimes learns, and this year, as the Kevin Taylor Legacy Creative in Residence with TCL, I learned how to love a garden and how a garden can love you back. (To life.)

One of the poems I wrote this year, puts it this way: A gardenIs the future planted in the past; change is most Of what a garden grows. Never still, neverDone, it thrives, if it thrives, by learning how To live with what it’s got. Among plants you learnNot how things will turn out, but the grace to let Them come.

TCL, it turns out, is “a timbered choir” (Wendell Berry’s phrase); TCL is a garden. I grew in the forest of the company I kept there—the fine, skilled, creative and passionate people whose work is place-making, who tend the relationship between the human world and the green world around us. Among them I remembered how to thrive.

Early in the year, I ran workshops for the firm on the poetics of everyday functional prose, on grammar and syntax and style. I had proposed to make some poems in response to and as part of one of the firm’s projects, and in August, we settled on The Garden of the Future, a new garden the firm is commissioned to make for the Bendigo Botanic Gardens. Through October and November, I wrote a suite of ten poems, parts and pieces of which may find their way into the new garden.

My poems play with ideas TCL dreamed up in response to the client’s brief: adaptation; resilience; aridity; play and chance and the unsettling of norms; the past and the future; a new green wealth to replenish a site made poor by gold; and the garden as conference of plants from biomes across the planet already adapted to climates like Bendigo’s and likely to prosper in that place on earth, along with endemic plants, in the drier, harder climate to come.

In time we’ll make those poems into a chapbook, illustrated by some artworks made by members of the firm. In the meantime, on Friday 9 December, TCL displayed my poems on banners and hung them among the art works made by everyone at TCL in response to some older poems of mine. That work was astonishingly accomplished, and it felt deeply humbling and inspiring to see my work responded to so thoughtfully, with such care and deep attention. The office became a gallery, and the Christmas Party the opening of an exhibition, a forest of sculpted thought and word.

As I’d hoped, my work for the firm became work with the firm. An ekphrasis. A garden. A future.

When they cut me down at the end of my time, when they bring chainsaws to halve me and haul me from the forest path where I’ve fallen, they’ll find one growth ring in me, more richly coloured, wider than the rest. That will be the year I, this Ent, stopped and remembered my name in the sacred grove that is TCL; that will be the year, though my weather was rough and the soil, at first, unpromising, that I flourished and took on flesh again and leafed out again and breathed the world in.

If I dropped some leaves, I hope they keep saying the forest that grew them; if I dropped bark, I hope it mulches every idea that grows at TCL.

It may have been a while between posts, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy!

The TICKLE booklet series is expanding with booklet .07, Friction in Public Space, soon to be completed. You may recall our posts on the TCL-RMIT studio collaboration, ‘Messy Compositions.’ The booklet, like these posts, aims to share the outcomes of the Upper Pool Studio’s explorations on the relationship between composition and messiness in the design of public space.

The soon-to-be-released booklet .07 will question:

How do we define public space vis-à-vis the ideas of ‘friction’ –

Between publics,

Between systems,

Between programs and processes,

Between past and present,

Between scales and qualities,

Between self and other,

Between public and private self.

How do we represent public space – the friction of/between its flux and form?

How do we approach the design of public space in a way that might catalyze friction?

Keep an eye on the Tickle Blog for more details on booklet .07 Friction in Public Space.

TCL are proud to support the second AILA Victoria Premier event of 2016 , ‘Connection to Country’ Symposium on 18th March 2016 at ZINC, Federation Square.

AILA Victoria, the IADV and the City of Melbourne to bring the Victorian built environment community an opportunity to take part in the continuing conversation about how we better engage with culture and nature to shape our future place.

This exciting day-long symposium from Chaired by Rueben Berg, Director IADV, attendees will provide Victorian built environment professionals with a deeper understanding of Victorian Cultural Landscapes, and how to respectfully and better engage with Indigenous Communities to inform and enrich design practice in Victoria and Australia. Attendees will hear will hear from an all Indigenous panel of leaders, artists, architects, and advocates about how to better acknowledge, interpret and respond to Indigenous land history and culture in projects.

The TCL Studio transformed last month to host the screening of Visiting Hours, a short film by Kasimir Burgess, the first recipient of the Kevin Taylor Legacy – Creative in Residence.

Kas had the opportunity during his residency to film the cartoonist, Michael Leunig while visiting a hospice where his childhood school teacher Joan lived. Joan was one of the few people to have faith in Michael as a child and to support and further his creativity.

In this short film Kas sculpts each scene into a powerful portrait which captures an inspiring old friendship and the mutual affections and understanding between Michael and Joan.

Visiting Hours forms part of a larger film by Kasimir Burgess on Michael Leunig’s life set to be released in 2016.

The annual community project ‘Get Sunflowered’ returns in 2016 to Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. TCL had the pleasure of designing a plot entitled

‘The Buzz’. A maze inspired design which celebrates bees as the… “greatest life workers of any community” – Bernard Jensen

TCL’s design allows visitors to enter a living maze of benefit and enchantment. Pick a pathway and follow the journey of our all-important pollinators to the Central Guard Tower.

From the tower the hexagonal maze is revealed and mass planted Helianthus annuus transition from vibrant yellows to oranges to reds as they boarder the Princes Highway.

The Buzz aims to create a community/ recreational space with a relationship to the world in which it exists. This space is an important food source for our pollinators and offers an opportunity to immerse yourself in the importance of regional biodiversity.

Last week, our very own Alexa Ongoco took a day off work to visit a primary school to meet Miss C’s prep and year one students. The purpose of her visit was to introduce the discipline of landscape architecture and what we do to the up and coming generation.

The students were asked what they thought landscape architecture was and these were some of the exciting responses given:

“Do you dig up dirt?”

“You work on projects!”

“You design toilets!”

“You scape the land!”

Alexa explained that as landscape architect, we designed parks, as well as streetscapes, playgrounds (which they loved the idea of), green walls and even zoo exhibitions. The students were then exposed to a whole range of popular landscape architecture projects that help provide a visual understanding of various outcomes. Amongst these projects, featured two TCL projects: ‘Pod Playground’ in Canberra and Carlton Garden’s playground. Upon seeing the images associated to each project the students were getting more and more excited:

“Giant acorns in the sky!”

“I need to remember these for minecraft!”

“Do people climb up those bars?”

Following a presentation, the kids were encouraged to think about what images they liked from the examples shown and try to reimagine and expand upon the designs for a concept for their school oval. They split up into group and they were given a choice of designing up in the sky, looking down like a bird (plan view) or looking out the window in front of the oval (sectional). They were allowed to use paints, glitter, pencils and pens, and had to make sure they worked together when making decisions. (Simulating a design workshop)

The activity lasted for about an hour, and by the end of it their ovals ranged in designs.

o Group 1: A water fountain that pushed out water and bubbles and had four taps (too hot, too cold, just right and bubbles!) and filtered into two ponds – one deep one for swimming, and one filled with rubber duckies. It was a night-time scene, so there were glittering stars in the sky and forests on either side with two blue benches.

o Group 2: A chocolate fountain took the centre stage, with a giant sun and a forest surrounding it. There were also many veggie patches including strawberries, pumpkins and lemons, and a garden bed

o Group 3: A summer and winter garden oval. The summer side had a garden bed, a beach and a pond with boats while the winter side had an igloo cubby house, a beautiful path, ice skating rink, snow and a polar bear!

o Group 4: A giant river with a sandy embankment and a grass slope with a tree house on top. There’s a water slide, a veggie patch and some fun plastic curved pipes to play on.

o Group 5: A giant mini golf (right) area, with dragonflies, water and slides and of course, the Sydney Tower with beautiful green walls and colourful foliage!

o Group 6: Giant trees and tree houses, with a water slide and footy inspired pavilions, with birds flying over

o Group 7: Banana trees and eagles were the main features for this design with water fountains and stairs making an appearance. A beautiful 3D, faceted, grassy installation was included for seating and picnic settings.

Alexa’s thoughts after the workshop:

“It was great being able to see the kids take on the precedents shown before and work/re-work those ideas into their designs with enthusiasm, as well as being able to watch their imagination be explored on paper. Who knows, maybe they might be our “budding” landscape architects of the future!”